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JJBRARY OF CONGRESS, | 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. | 



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REPORT 

OF THE 

COMMITTEE 

OF THE. 

ON A 

ITATIOHAL MAME, 

MARCH 31, 1845. 



The Committee, appointed by a resolution of the Society of the 
4th instant, upon the subject of the irrelevant appellation, at pre- 
sent used for this country, with the view of enquirin.f? whether a 
g-eographical name might not be suggested more distinctive and 
significant, and more likely to promote national associations, and 
prove efficient in History, Poetry, and Art; beg leave to Report: 

That while they cannot expect to present new views of a subject, 
that from time to time, since the commencement of our national 
existence, has engaged the attention of some of our most eminent 
and patriotic citizens, they have still hopes, that some valuable and 
often repeated suggestions may be so presented to this socieLy, as 
to secure its favorable attention, and through it, that of our coun- 
trymen generally, and ultimately to result in the adoption of a 
national name. 

When we speak of a national name, we mean of course one 
that is both single and distinctive. The formula " United States 
of America" is neither. Being a phrase, from which it is impos- 
sible to derive an adjective, we have no means of describing our- 
selves, but by a circumlocution. We cannot even say " United 
States of America men;" if we say " United Staters," we laugh at 
ourselves, and if we call ourselves " Americans," we tise a word 
that at present belongs to the whole hemisphere. Nor has the 
phrase the merit even of being distinctive. There are on this con- 
tinent four or five " United States." " United States of North 
America" as some will have it, is scarcely more accurate. North 
America has three " United States" already, our own, the United 
States of Central America, and the United States of Mexico. In 



<^> 



fine, " United States of America" has now scarcely more appropri- 
ateness to us than United States of Europe would have to the 
provinces of France, or to the United Kingdom of Great Britain 
and Ireland.* 

If this were not one nation, hut a confederacy of different nations, 
without a homogeneous population, or a common character, we 
might not need a general name. The names of the different 
nations composing the confederacy, would sufficiently distinguish 
their respective citizens, and for (he confederacy itself any descrip- 
tion, as in the case of the " quadruple alliance" or the " lioly alli- 
ance" might suffice. Pennsylvanian, Vermontese, or Virginian, 
might serve as a distinctive appellation in any part of the world, 
if Pennsylvania, or Vermont, or Virginia, were great and pow- 
erful enough to be of any account, beyond the pale of our Union, 
and might be sufficient for all purposes, if the Pennsylvanian, 
the Vermontese, and the Virginian, were not also fellow country- 

* The following are examples of the manner in which our anomalous 
state is mentioned by foreigners: 

" America has not even a poetical name to ring the changes upon, and 
in the last extremity of distress, the poets sometimes call her the Western 
Star! One of them, in a sort of despair, expresses doubts whether she has 
properly any distinctive designation Avhatever; and considering that Ame- 
rica is the name of tlie wliole continent ; that Columbia never actually adopted 
is now " repudiated ;" that North America includes Canada, Greenland, 
Mexico and Texas; that the term " United States'' applies equally to the 
Southern Confederation; and that there is nothing left, native to the soil, 
except the ludicrous New England tide of Yankee, it does seem as if the 
founders of the Republic forgot to give it a name." — Foreign Quarterly 
Review, January, 1844. 

" One ofthemost distinguished geographers of the Union, Mr. Tanner, 
correctly remarks, that this confederation offers the geographical anomaly 
of an immense country, without a proper name. In fact, Ave find ' United 
States' in Europe, in the Ionian Islands — 'United States' in North Ame- 
rica, in the confederations of Mexico and Central America — 'United States' 
in South America, in the ci-devant vice-royalty of Rio de la Plata, and we 
are on the point of seeing others spring up, by the division of the Republic 
of Colombia. We had made the same remark long ago ; and for some years 
we have proposed the names of Anglo-American Confederation, and Anglo- 
Americans, to designate the soil and the inhabitants of this important part 
of the new world. These denominations, based principally upon the origin 
of the great mass of the inhabitants, have been already adopted in many 
works of merit, and we think we can, without inconvenience, use them provi- 
sionally, until it shall please Congress to give them a convenient name." — 
Balbi Ahrege de Geographic, p. 1015. 



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men, and for that reason in need of a word to signify their common 
relation. 

If we are, what we boast, one people, and one nation, "e 
pluribus unum," with national traits, national impulses, a general 
history, and a common character, let us have a word significant 
of that unity. Let us have a sign in our language that such a 
NATION exists. 

We believe that the people of all the states of this Union are 
one people ; that they have national characteristics, and national 
ideas ; that they are one in heart as one in character ; with sym- 
pathies and bonds older than governments and stronger than 
laws ; and that if they were to-day broken into a score of lepublics, 
they would remain, like the Germans, one people, though many 
nations. 

What we want is a sign of our identity. We want utterance 
for our nationality. We want a watchword more national than 
that of states, more powerful than that of party. We want the 
means of proclaiming by one w^ord our union into one nation. 
We desire to see written on the pages of the world's history, 
one name, in which no other people shall have part or lot, that 
shall signify to the old world the Great Republic beyond the 
Ocean ; a word that shall represent the idea of a united and 
homogeneous people ; that shall be associated with our history 
and progress; that shall rest upon our flag and go with our advanc- 
ing eagles. 

Let it not be thought a mere matter of convenience. It is more. 
It has much to do with national and heroic sentiment. The inti- 
mate relation between language and sentiment is as certain as any 
law of nature. Mean ideas will be associated with mean words. 
And a nation will get a nick-7ia7?ie, if it has no other. 

Our condition is altogether anomalous. There never before 
has been a nation, of any consequence in the w^orld, without its 
own appropriate, distinctive name. The great nations that have 
hitherto arisen, liave made their names " a spell in story." And 
who can doubt that the names themselves re-acted as a spell 
upon their people, prompting them to heroic deeds, Iieightening and 
concentrating their love and pride of countr}'. Nationality must 
express itself in words. If it finds none it will dissipate itself 
and disappear. True patriotism, then, not less than taste and con- 
venience, prompt us to seek for it some adequate expression. 

In our own case the necessities of language and the peculiar 
circumstances of our history, have led to a double use of the name 
of the continent. Custom has sought to supply what the early 
legislation of the country should not have omitted. The word 
" America" is to some extent used indiscriminately for the 
country and for the continent. This, while seeming to relieve us 
in part from the embarrassments, consequent upon our want of 



name, has really increased them by leading to confusion and un- 
certainty in language. 

The origin of this double use is well known. At the breaking 
out of the revolution, the whole hemisphere was colonial. Our 
only relations were with England. These colonies aud Canada 
were her American provinces. When they began to act toge- 
ther, they hoped for tlie union of Canada, and they assumed to 
act as the United Provinces of America. The rest, of the conti- 
nent in its then secluded and colonial dependence was of small 
account in the eyes of the revolted provinces. In their view tb.e 
continent embraced only themselves. Their congress was the 
continental congress, their army the continental army, as distin- 
guished from the provincial congresses and troops. When they 
declared their independence, they did it as the United States of 
America. They afterwards formed their confederation and their 
constitution under the same title. There were then no other 
STATES in Anierica. 

But since then the face of the New World has changed. Spain 
and the Indies are severed. The hemisphere is covered with na- 
tions. To the south of the great lakes, with one exception, there 
is not a sinpic colony. We are no longer the only states of 
America. 

We want now, more than ever before, a distinctive appellation. 
On this subject we will venture to quote the following passage fioni 
a letter of Washington Irving, published some years ago. " We 
want a national name. We want it poetically, and we want it po- 
litically. With the poetical necessity of the case," says that most - 
tasteful of writers, "1 shall not trouble myself. I leave it to our 
poets to tell how they manage to steer that collocation of words, 
" The United States of North America," down the swelling tide of 
song, and to float the whole raft out upon the sea of heroic 
poesy. I am now speaking of the mere purposes of common 
life. How is a citizen oi this republic to designate himself? 
As an American] There are two Americas, each subdivided 
into various empires, rapidly rising in importance. As a citizen of 
the United States'? It is a clumsy, lumbering title, yet still it is 
not distinctive ; for we have now the United States of Central 
America ; and heaven knows how many United States may spring 
up under the Proteus changes of Spanish America. 

" This raav appear matter of small concernment ; but any one 
that has travelled in foreign countries, must be conscious of the 
embarrassment and circumlocution sometimes occasioned by the 
want of a perfectly distinct and explicit national appellation. In 
France, when I have announced myself as an American, I have 
been supposed to belong to one of the French colonies ; in Spain, 
to be from Mexico or Peru, or some other Spanish American 
country. Repeatedly have I found myself in a long geographical 
and political definition of my national identity. 



" The title of American ma}'- serve to tell the quarter of the 
world to which I belong-, the same as a Frenchman or an English- 
ff^ man may call himself a European; but I want my own peculiar 
if national name, to rally under. I want an appellation that shall 
tell at once, and in a wa}^ not to be mistaken, that I belong to this 
very portion of America, geographical and political, to which it is 
my pride and happiness to belong : that 1 am of the Anglo-Saxon 
race, which founded this Anglo-Saxon empire in the wilderness; 
and that I have no pnrt or parcel willi any other race or empire, 
Spanisli, French, or Portuguese, in either of tlie Americas. Such 
an appellation would have magic in it. It would bind every part 
of the confederacy together, as with a key stone; it would be a 
passport to the citi?:en of our republic, throughout the world." 

Nothing that we could say would add to the force of this lan- 
guage. 

What then is the remedy? 

If it were possible to retain and appropriate strictly to ourselves 
the name of America, and to substitute Columbia as the name of the 
continent, we should be able by one act, to give a beautiful name 
to our own country, and to do justice to tlie discoverer of the New 
World. It was a strange caprice of fortune that robbed Columbus 
of his right to name what he discovered. In the earliest narratives 
of the voyages of himself and his inmiediate followers, this is called 
the New World. (Novus Oibis.) Amerigo Vespucci made a voy- 
age to the Brazils in 1501, and the narrative of the voyage repre- 
sented him as the first person who liad seen the main land. The 
district of coast, which he visited was designated at first by his 
name, and by degrees as the shape of the continent was developed 
by succeeding voyagers, the name thus given to a part, fastened 
itself upon the whole. Columbus had, however, seen the main 
land, opposite Trinidad, as early as 1498 ; and if the first sight of 
the land gave the right of name, the southern continent should 
have been called Columbia, and the northern named after Cabot, 
who first discovered it as early as 1497. But both continents, and 
all the west were in fact laid open to the old world by Columbus, 
and his name, if any one name, should have been given to the 
whole. 

It would be a jnemorablc instance of the justice, with which 
Time rewards true greatness, if, after the lapse of three cen- 
turies, during which the old world had acquiesced in the wrong 
to Columbus, the first great empire establislied in the New 
World, which his genius and daring laid open to the Old, should 
illustrate its first century of dominion by restoring his name to the 
hemisphere. We wish it were reserved to this country to do it- 
self and Columbus justice, by an act so sublime. And we do not 
despair of yet seeing his name borne by the southern continent, 
as distinguished from the northern, while the latter retains the 



name of America. But a chang-e of the name of the continent 
would require tlie concurrence of other nations, wliich it might 
be impossible to obtain. In that view a speeiMc geographical 
name for this countr^r is indispensable. 

Where should it be found 1 It should bo fotmd in some of those 
great natural features, the eternal works of the xlhnighty, Avhich 
man cannot remove or change, and which belong to tlie whole 
country. It must be sought in our mountains, or our hikes, or 
our river.-j. If we look there, we find one, and only one sufficiently 
national and unappropriated, the Alleganian or Apalachian chain 
of mountains, that vast chain which sees on its eastern declivities the 
States of the Atlantic, and casts its shadow westward to the Father 
of Rivers. The Chippewan, or Rocky Mountains, our only other 
great range, are too little familiar to us. No one of the northern 
lakes is national enough. And our only national river, with its 
tributaries, has already given name to six of our States, Mississippi, 
Arkansas, Missouri, Tennessee, Ohio, and Ilhnois. 

Irving proposed a name from the Alleganian range, and the more 
we have reflected upon it, the more appropriate it seems to us. He 
says in the letter from which we have already quoted — 

"We have it in our power to furnish ourselves with such a na- 
tional appellation, from one of the grand and eternal features of 
our country ; from that noble chain of mountains which formed 
its back-bone, and ran through the old confederacy, when it first 
declared our national independence. I allude to the Apalachian 
or Alleghany Mountains. We might do tliis without any very 
inconvenient change in our present titles. We might still use the 
phrase, 'The United States,' — substituting Apalachia, or Allegha- 
nia, (I should prefer the latter,) in place of America. The title 
of Apalachian, or Alleghanian, would still announce us as Ameri- 
cans, but would specify us as citizens of the Great Republic. 
Even our old national cypher of U. S. A. might remain unaltered, 
designating the United States of Alleghania." 

In our view, nothing can be found more appropriate than some 
derivative from the grandest natural feature of the country; 
one that is common to the north and south ; the longest and the 
highest chain of mountains, east of the Oregon range; the back- 
bone of the original thirteen states : and the dividing ridge between 
the Atlantic rivers and the great central valley of the continent. 

To this ridge our country is indebted for a great part of its 
beauty and healthfulness. If it had not been raised as a bar- 
rier to the waters from the west, now turned southward to the 
gulf of Mexico, the rivers from the Rocky Mountains, swollen by 
the intervening streams, would have found their way to the sea 
across the continent, and made the Atlantic States low and un- 
healthy, like the country on the Amazon and Oronoco. 

It also binds the country together, as with a band of iron. By 



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turning the waters of the Mississippi valley into one charniel, and 
thereby creating a political necessity that they who inhabit the 
upper regions and sources of the rivers should connnand their out- 
let, it n)akes it impossible i'or any portion of the valley to separate 
itself from the rest, while the seaboard is too narrow and too depen- 
dant upon the interior to maintain a separate political existence. If 
the Alleganian ridges had i)cen extended further north, so as to 
turn the St. Lawrence southward, Canada would long ago have 
been a part of this confederation. That ])art of America, there- 
fore, whicli we inhabit, is in fact, whatever we may choose to call 
it, Alleganian America. 

The appellation moreover comes from the aboriginal inhabitants, 
whose names, though we have driven themselves out, still cling 
and will cling forever to the highest peaks of the land. But more 
than that, it comes from that primordial race, more ancient 
than our nomadic tribes, beyond which no Indian tradition can go; 
that wide spread people, whose mysterious history, dimly shadowed 
by their vast mounds in the wilderness, call up so many images of 
durability, of power, of wide endjracing sway;images to which 
our progress of empire has given new vitality. 

The name of the Alleganian ridge is associated also with the 
best parts of our own history ; with colonial adventure, and revo- 
lutionary heroism. What so fitting as that it should give name to 
the land, which it overlooks. 

But how, it may be asked, can this object be accomplished ? 
How can the name be brought into use? We answer, by the agree- 
ment of our people. Satisfy them of its fitness, and tlie}^ will as- 
suredly adopt it. The time is favorable. Our intercourse with 
the rest of the W'orld has so extended itself, that the number of 
those who have personally felt the inconvenience of our want of 
name, is greater than it ever was before. Our literature is grow- 
ing fast into a vigorous manhood. Cooper has already made 
our Indian names classical in every language of Europe. The 
term of the Republic has but just begun. What are seventy years 
in the life of a people ; a life wdiich measures itself by centuries. 

Towards the accomplishment of so desirable an object, this so- 
ciety may do something. If it expresses its own views ; if it asks 
for the co-operation of other societies, and of public men ; if it 
commends tlie subject to writers and teachers ; and finally, if it 
shall press it upon the consideration of Congress ; it will not have 
gone ioeyond the sphere of its proper duties, and will have done all 
that it can do towards an end so worthy of effort. 

In conclusion, we beg leave respectfully to recommend the 
adoption of the following resolutions : 

First. That it is expedient that efforts should now be made 
to unite upon a specific geographicai- name for the country ; 



and while (his Society disciaiins atiy preteBriion to decide upon a 
question oi' such general interest, yet, as the object is of common 
concern, and any successful movement in regard to it, must begin 
among the people, we venture, for \yant of others to undertake itj 
to bring the subject before them, in the hope that the requisite action 
may be no longer delayed. 

Second. That the name of Allegania* be recommended as the 
best, considering that it is derived from the grandest and most use- 
ful natural feature common to the whole country, an eternal type 
of strength and union, stretching from the Gulf of Mexico to the 
great lakes ; that it is associated with the most interesting portions 
of our history ; and that in adopting it we should restore to the land 
one of the primordial titles of the aborigines. 

Third. That a letter be addressed by the society to other histo- 
rical societies and to eminent citizens in ditlerent parts of the 
country, asking their concurrence and co-operation in bringing the 
name before the people. 

Fourth. That the want of a specific name for our country be- 
ing an essential defect in elementary works of education, it be 
proposed to the authors of school books and maps, to designate 
this country hereafter as the " Republic of Allegania." 

All which is respectfully submitted. 

DAVID DUDLEY FIELD. 
HENRY R. SCHOOLCRAFT. 
CHARLES FENNO HOFFMAN. 

JSew York, March 3lst, 1845. 



♦ It might perhaps be pronounced Algania, the four first letters " Alle" 
&s one syllable. 



